Obama Adviser on Front Lines of Climate Fight

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John Holdren, a physicist, has President Obama’s ear at a time when climate change has been thrust to the forefront of national politics and could shape the president’s legacy.CreditChip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Speaking to a friendly audience of environmental advocates last week, President Obama mocked members of Congress who “duck the question,” as he put it, of whether climate change is real by saying that they are not scientists.

The line got a laugh, in part because Mr. Holdren, a physicist and the White House science adviser since the beginning of the administration, is hardly just a “guy” — he has had one of the more prominent careers in academia and policy making of any scientist in the land.

But it also acknowledged a truth: Mr. Holdren has this president’s ear, perhaps more than any White House science adviser in recent memory, at a time when climate change has been thrust to the forefront of national politics and could help shape Mr. Obama’s legacy.

Mr. Holdren’s influence can be seen in many of the administration’s policies, including its biggest on climate change — the plan to cut power plant emissions of carbon dioxide, the main contributor to global warming.

“John was right at the heart” of the deliberations, said the White House chief of staff, Denis R. McDonough.

For much of his four-decade career, Mr. Holdren, 70, has focused on climate change and its perils, and he has not been shy about voicing his opinions. “He’s somebody that people want to hear from,” Mr. McDonough said. “And even if he weren’t, he’d be sure he was heard from.”

Mr. Holdren, whose views and pivotal role in the administration have put him in the cross hairs of critics, also spearheaded the most recent National Climate Assessment report, which painted a stark picture of the impact climate change is having on the nation.

“That was a very substantial project for him,” said John D. Podesta, a chief of staff to President Bill Clinton and now a counselor to Mr. Obama. “Both in terms of ensuring the quality and validity of the report, as well as trying to explain it first to the president and then to the public.”

But even some people who admire his intelligence and ability to explain the science of climate change say his passion for the issue can work against him.

“He is a zealot,” said John W. Rowe, the former chief executive of the energy company Exelon, who was a co-chairman with Mr. Holdren of a panel on energy policy in the 2000s. “If you start off skeptical of his science because of the eminence of his zeal, you can be confirmed in your skepticism.”

Mr. Holdren’s zeal, and his tendency to present somewhat alarming visions of the future, have stirred controversy. During his Senate confirmation hearings in 2009, critics pointed out a textbook of which he was an author in the 1970s that examined the threat of overpopulation and discussed potential ways to avoid it, including forcing pregnant single women to undergo abortions and adding chemicals to drinking water to make people infertile.

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At the League of Conservation Voters’ Capital Dinner, President Obama spoke out against members of Congress who say that climate change is “a liberal plot.”Published OnJuly 3, 2014CreditImage by Mark Wilson/Getty Images

“Compulsory control of family size is an unpalatable idea, but the alternatives may be much more horrifying,” the book said. It continued, “A far better choice, in our view, is to expand the use of milder methods of influencing family size preferences, while redoubling efforts to ensure that the means of birth control, including abortion and sterilization, are accessible to every human being on Earth.”

At the hearings, Mr. Holdren said that he had not endorsed any coercive population-control measures and that such activities were not a proper role of government. He was confirmed unanimously, but the issue has been kept alive on conservative talk radio and blogs.

Confronted on the subject during a question-and-answer session at a speech last year, Mr. Holdren responded testily: “I’m kind of tired of that question. Folks should go back and look at the book.”

Last winter, Mr. Holdren was featured in a short video meant to rebut claims that a recent spell of extreme cold weather disproved global warming. He cited “a growing body of evidence” that he said suggested such cold spells could increase as the Arctic grows warmer. The Competitive Enterprise Institute, a Washington research group that is skeptical about climate change, demanded a correction, arguing that several recent scientific papers had disproved Mr. Holdren’s statement.

In fact, among climate scientists the issue of a link between Arctic warming and cold spells is still far from resolved. The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, which Mr. Holdren leads, said it stood by the accuracy of the video but added, “there will be continuing debate about exactly what is happening.”

Mr. Holdren is not reluctant to defend himself. At a hearing in February, Senator Jeff Sessions, Republican of Alabama, confronted him with earlier testimony by Roger Pielke Jr., a political scientist, that Mr. Holdren had issued misleading statements about the link between climate change and Western droughts. Mr. Holdren responded that Mr. Pielke’s comments “were not representative of mainstream views,” and a few days later went further, issuing a rare point-by-point rebuttal that accused Mr. Pielke of being the misleading one.

Mr. Holdren, whom the White House declined to make available to be interviewed for this article, has been the head of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, among other public-policy appointments, and as a leader of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs he delivered the acceptance speech when the group shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1995 for its work on nuclear disarmament.

During the Clinton administration, he served on the president’s council of advisers on science and technology, but he refused all entreaties to become the science adviser. When Mr. Obama was elected, however, he persuaded Mr. Holdren to take the job.

One thing that caught the Obama team’s attention, according to some who were there at the time, was a 2008 appearance on “Late Show With David Letterman” in which Mr. Holdren discussed the science behind climate change.

Mr. Holdren meets with the president regularly, but he also advises on a less formal basis. Mr. McDonough said the president often reads about scientific subjects in the newspaper or online and sends his staff notes that say, “I need to know what Holdren thinks on this.”

Despite all the involvement in policy, Mr. Holdren can still be a geeky scientist. Rosina M. Bierbaum, a professor at the University of Michigan who sits on the president’s council, recalled that during the 2011 crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan, “he would actually sit down and try to do some of the calculations” to better understand the unfolding disaster.

“He likes to get into the weeds and check the numbers,” Ms. Bierbaum said. “But he can also think strategically.”

He also likes to apply scientific analysis to some of his favorite activities, like saltwater fly-fishing, colleagues say.

Despite disagreeing with Mr. Holdren on some climate issues, Mr. Rowe, the energy panel co-chairman, said they worked well together. “He knows the studies backwards and forwards, and is as articulate on them as anyone I’ve ever met,” he said. “And he tolerates others reasonably well, and laughs at himself at least a little.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A11 of the New York edition with the headline: Obama Adviser on Front Lines of Climate Fight. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe